Onorato: Corbett is 'out of touch' in jobs flap

July 12, 2010

Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Corbett is "out-of-touch" with the needs of working Pennsylvanians and should apologize for remarks he made last week that some jobless state residents would prefer to stay unemployed, his Democratic rival said this morning.

"My opponent thinks that's what wrong with the economy is that Pennsylvanians are lazy and simply don't want to work," Democrat Dan Onorato said at a Capitol news conference. "He is simply wrong."

Corbett, the two-term attorney general, came under heavy fire over the weekend for remarks he made to a public radio reporter during a campaign stop in Lancaster County, where he suggested that some Pennsylvanians would prefer to continue collecting benefits to getting a job and that Congress' decision to extend unemployment compensation was a disincentive to return to work.

"The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there ... I've literally had construction companies tell me, I can't get people to come back to work until…they say, 'I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out,'" Corbett said.

This morning, Onorato vigorously disagreed.

"It's not the workers who are the problem," Onorato said to an audience of supporters that included construction workers and other members of the state's building trades unions. "The jobs are gone. We've got to do something to bring them back to Pennsylvania."

To suggest that workers were purposefully staying unemployed suggested that, "you've never met someone who is unemployed," Onorato said.

Onorato said the next governor has to use a mix of economic incentives, including tax breaks and direct assistance, to lure employers to the state. He also reiterated a long-standing call to reduce business taxes and to close loopholes in the tax laws to make the state more competitive.

"People are struggling to find work," Onorato said. "No one can convince me that people don't have an incentive. The problem is that the jobs went away. We have to get the jobs back."

Asked whether he believed Congress should approve a six-month extension in benefits for jobless workers, Onorato said it was a "short-term" fix, and that longer-term efforts should be made to revitalize the state and national economy.

"If they extend [them], it would be helpful, but it's not a long-term answer," he said. "I'm not going to allow that to send us off-course from what the real issues are."

Michael Barley, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, said Corbett was sympathetic to the plight of the unemployment and intended to focus on returning jobs to the state.

"Tom Corbett has a plan to create jobs. He understands there is a problem," Barley said.

The jobs can't return soon enough for Isaac Wasie, an unemployed millwright from Shamokin, Pa. The father of a nine-year-old boy, Wasie said he's been unemployed for a month.

If there's an open job, "I'll do it," he said. "I'll take what I can get," Wasie added.